


illa vincit, qui se vincit

by Aenaria



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast Fusion, Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's Daughter, F/M, Fairy Tales, Fractured Fairy Tale, Gen, Magic, WIP Big Bang 2017, he's the perfect mad inventor - I couldn't resist it, or maybe closer to the original ones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 12:40:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11783367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aenaria/pseuds/Aenaria
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a witch in a castle who stole a frozen Captain for her collection.Once upon a time, an intern got lost in the woods and offered to trade herself to the castle for her friend’s life and freedom.Once upon a time in the castle, the intern and the Captain meet and, as the magic begins to decay and the relationship grows, they learn more about the true nature of the castle, what it means to be human, and what really makes a home.An MCU take on Beauty and the Beast, inspired by Angela Carter, the B&B Broadway musical, and so many other tales swirled together.





	illa vincit, qui se vincit

**Author's Note:**

> It’s here, it’s finally here! I am so excited to finally release this story into the world, forced to finishing thanks to the WIP Big Bang event. As crazy as the deadlines drove me, they helped me get this done. This is the ShieldShock Beauty and the Beast inspired story that nobody really asked for, but the muse demanded it be written, and so I did. If you’re looking for a story that follows along the plotline of the Disney movies, this story isn’t quite that, though it was definitely inspired by elements from there. Let’s call this a canon divergence story where all the movies prior to the Avengers happened, and then it took a left turn from there. I also couldn’t resist making this a Darcy Stark story, because having our Beauty be the child of the mad inventor is appropriate no matter what universe it’s in. ;)
> 
> Please forgive the dodgy Latin title. I tried to feminize a distinctive phrase from the Disney B&B movie, but Google translate is especially iffy when it comes to Latin. If anyone can tell me how the phrase is supposed to be to be accurate, please let me know and I’ll change the title to be grammatically correct.
> 
> My heartiest thanks to Dizzy-Redhead for her amazing editing job, and for helping me to flesh out a scene that was only just dialogue even at the end of the process. To Merideath and Rembrandtswife, for hand-holding and listening to me babble about plot elements and then helping me find my way through them. To [red_b_rackham](http://archiveofourown.org/users/red_b_rackham/pseuds/red_b_rackham), for her gorgeous, inspirational art. And to all the lovely, patient readers of my blog who cheered me on as I was writing and gave me so much wonderful support.
> 
> Okay, I’m going to save the rest of the notes for the end of the story. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for reading!

Illa vincit, qui se vincit

(she conquers who conquers herself)

 

Check out the gorgeous art by red_b_rackham [here!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11780013)  It is amazing and wonderful and I can’t thank her enough for it. <3

 

_ The past as prologue _

 

Once upon a time, there is a witch.  Old as the rocks that creak and roll down the hillsides, yet young and fresh in the eyes of man, she spends her days collecting the things that she deems to be pretty and attractive.  This is not a kind collection, as the things she collects usually are not willing.

One day, decades past from the now, she takes a soldier for her collection.  Her timing is impeccable, swooping in to steal him just at the moment of death because she knows that no one will miss him.  Death is relative, of course, at least in the case of the soldier, but as the world has begun to spin on without him, death is the easiest word for it.  When he wakes up, he’s chilled to the bone, cold so deep-set within him that he feels he’ll never warm up again, despite the fire at his back and the thick pile of animal furs below him.

The witch tells the soldier that out of the goodness of her heart she has rescued him from those icy waters that would have been his grave.  She waits for his response, waits to hear him express his gratefulness for her kindness and selflessness.  The selflessness is a lie.  He is exceedingly pretty, she thinks, and will be ideal for her collection.  He just has to pay her the required respect and thanks before anything else, and then they can move on.

The soldier is tongue-tied, however, the words frozen and still within his mouth.  The thoughts of what he’s lost, of the love left behind, of fallen compatriots, spin around in his head, and all he would like to do is go home.  But he finds that he can’t say any of these things to the witch, only a stuttering, stumbling collection of unintelligible syllables trip off of his tongue.

“Well, that won’t do,” the witch sighs, resigned.  “You are a bit of a brute, aren’t you?”  She clicks sharp, pointed nails on the arm of her throne, the noises echoing through the cavernous space.  “I should give you a form to match that beastly tongue of yours.”  

If she can’t have a pretty new consort for her collection, then at least she can have a brute of a beast to guard her prized possessions within the drafty castle, to put the fear of myth and magic into anyone who dares cross her and try and steal what is rightfully hers.

The witch’s eyes glow with a cold, pale fire, and she flicks her fingers out with determination.

Before the soldier can do anything, let alone force the words from his mouth, he feels thecold splinter within his body, shards of ice and glass driving out of his skin with an agonizing pain that sets him howling.  He screams loud and long, filling the chamber with sounds of pain that make the witch smirk and gloat, full of power.

When the soldier opens his eyes again, so much of his humanity has been ripped out of him, that all he can do is take off on his four newly-formed paws and run deeper into the depths of the castle, looking for shelter.

 

**********

 

It’s so much easier to be a beast, the soldier is finding.  His mind slips between the two states; sometimes he’s mostly animal to match his new facade, but other times human eyes shine out of his transformed face, full of pain and grief for what was lost. 

He should have died.  He was prepared to die.  It wasn’t what he wanted, but he was secure in the knowledge that his sacrifice would spare the world from even more pain than it was being put through.  The last thing he remembers is the sudden jarring impact, the sound of ice crashing against metal, and the chill of icy water sweeping over his skin before he fell unconscious.  Then the next thing he knows, he’s face to face with the witch, no time to think before he’s turned into this, this abominable creature. 

It’s easier to embrace that beastly side of him that’s come out now, all rage and despair without conscious effort.  

The soldier finds that he’s not the only beast in this castle, though he is larger than all the rest of them.  Some look like forest creatures, like they’ve come down from the thick mess of trees just beyond the garden walls outside, while others are more like household items, enchanted to walk and talk just like humans do.  In point of fact, they are infinitely more human than he feels most days.  They are helpful, however, making sure that the less coherent beasts of the castle are cared for and fed, given warm bedding to curl up in at nights when that icy chill bounces off the stone walls and seeps into bones once more.

It’s not much, these small kindnesses, but they help to remind the soldier of the human that still lurks inside of him.

 

**********

 

The witch likes to come back to her castle to visit her prizes, wandering through museum rooms of enchanted objects and the menagerie of beasts she’s obtained.  The soldier tries to hide away, an instinctive part of him knowing that this person is dangerous and he should protect himself, yet she always manages to find him.

This time, she corners him in an alcove hidden away behind a statue in the library, with its multitude of shelves and balconies, its rainbow’s worth of book covers that shine with gilded lettering from their perches.  The soldier’s not even sure why the library is there, most of the enchanted folk in the castle don’t even have proper hands to turn the delicate pages with, but it’s safer not to question the witch’s whims.

(On days when he’s feeling more human he’ll nudge a book off the shelves with his nose, carefully clawing at the edges of the pages to go back to the beginning of the story and lose himself, just for a little while, within the words and the stories.)

“You’ll never be able to escape me entirely, you know,” the witch says, peering into the darkness where he’s crouched, ready to spring out at her if needed.  “Because at some point that little scrap of humanity that lingers inside of you will be lost, and then I’ll be back to bring you into the fold.  I’ll have you, body  _ and _ mind.  Your soul won’t matter at that point.”

The soldier growls at her, low and rumbling, echoing through the library, bouncing off of marble floors and carved wooden walls.  ‘Like hell,’ he wants to tell her through the growls.  ‘No matter what, you will never get me.’ 

“It won’t matter,” the witch laughs, a cold and sharp chuckle that cuts through the skin.  “No one’s ever going to fight for a brute like you.  Once your time runs out, and it will, I guarantee you that, you’re mine.”

“Fuck you,” the soldier forces out with vocal chords unused to human speech, past sharp canines that catch and tumble the words like gravel.

“Oh, you’re a little late for that,” the witch says, smirking.

 

**********

 

More enchanted folk come to the castle that’s just outside of time, more creatures for the witch’s collection. One of them, a young man who was ripped from the skies when his partner fell and transformed into a large, sleek, commanding red-tailed hawk, recognizes the soldier, as both a legend and a fellow military man.  

“Captain R-” the bird begins, only to be cut off by a snap of the soldier’s jaws and a shake of his furry head.

“Don’t call me that,” he rumbles, slumping down on four paws in front of a crackling fireplace, the one bright spot in an otherwise dark and cavernous drawing room.  “I’m not that person any more.”  It’s easier for him to talk to a fellow creature, he’s finding.  Maybe it’s something about the magic that binds them all together, opens the lines of communication between all of them, but it doesn’t really matter, the soldier thinks.

The bird flaps its wings, and soars over to perch on the back of a chair, looking down at the soldier.  “If you say so, man.  Not sure I believe you, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”  The soldier rolls his eyes upward, giving the bird a glare that’s apparent even without the full range of human expression.  “I’ll just call you Cap, then.  How does that sound?”

The soldier grumbles low in his chest, but he doesn’t disagree.

“And in return, you can call me Sam.”

 

**********

 

Not all of the creatures in the witch’s collection are as pleasant as the soldier - as Cap and Sam are and the helpers are.  The witch fills her collection based on what she deems pretty, and personality doesn’t seem to apply.  This results in many of her finds being angry and wrathful creatures, ones who have given into the base, inhuman side of things.  Fighting is all too common in the halls of the castle, and blood is constantly spilled across the carpets, pooling on the stones and dripping down staircases.

If Cap had his way, he’d have nothing to do with the melee, preferring to hide himself away in the library and ignore everything but Sam, who’s taken to perching on the shelves and staring down with his razor sharp eyes.  But the creatures keep getting more and more violent, to the point where they’ve stumbled across corpses in the hallways, and so Cap has to step in.  He’s bigger and stronger than all the rest, he knows, so he’s the only way to keep the danger at bay.

Well, it’s not the first time in his life that he’s been a leader.

As time goes by the witch eventually stops coming to visit her menagerie, never to be seen again.  Even after her disappearance, however, her magic is still strong, keeping the castle’s enchantment alive and vibrant and all of her creatures in their transformed states.  Then it’s even more important for Cap to keep the peace, at least for a given value of peace within this place.

(The witch runs afoul of another dangerous woman in the mundane world, one who’s just as determined to protect it as the witch is to possess it.  Peggy Carter doesn’t even blink when she dispatches the witch, saving the life of a small, delicate, pretty child she was determined to add to her collection.)

The witch stops coming, new creatures stop coming, and the castle in the woods outside of time lingers in that soft place there, untouched by the outside world.

Until one day, a couple of visitors arrive.

 

**********

_ Uninvited _

 

“If you let Jane go, let her walk out of here, back to our truck, and drive off safely out of the forest...I’ll stay behind,” Darcy Lewis says, hoping that the shaking she feels in her hands isn’t obvious to the pack of creatures surrounding them.

Creatures is such a mild word for it too, she thinks.  Some of them look more like animals, zoo beasts you might see in any city, some are hybrid creatures that look like they walked right out of a fairy tale.  Others...a walking, gilded coat rack, sparks of light that flicker and flit across the high beamed ceiling, and other things that couldn’t be, shouldn’t be real and yet are right in front of her eyes.  What the hell kind of rabbit hole have they fallen down?

“Darcy, don’t you dare!” Jane cries out, struggling against the arm of a chair that’s actively holding her back.  Not fully restrained, not really, but the creatures are clever enough to keep her and Jane away from each other just enough so that they aren’t in contact.

“No, it makes sense,” Darcy says, twisting around until she can look Jane right in the eye.  “I’m not as important as you are - “

“Bullshit!”

“I’m not the one making all of those great scientific leaps and bounds.  So I’ll stay here and you can go out there and discover all the things.  And maybe call the cops if I can’t get myself out of this rat trap.”  She pointedly ignores the derisive, rough chuckles coming from the creatures at that last statement.  It’s obvious that they don’t believe her.

Jane shakes her head, dark hair flying in stringy chunks around her face.  They hadn’t meant to run the car off the road as they drove through the forest, but they’d swerved to avoid an animal, and then the engine stalled out, and they’d only walked a few feet away from the car to get a better phone signal before the world had shifted and the path had only led to this castle and nothing else.  “I’m not going to leave you here; we’re going to get out of this together.”

“We can keep you here together too,” a sibilant voice hisses, and the ruckus of harsh laughter rises up again once more.  “Hunt you down and chase you together.”

Darcy inhales sharply.  She may not see the light of day ever again, but if she can make sure that Jane is safe then it’ll be worth it.  There’s a shift in the air above her head, a small noise that rises even above the chaos.  She looks up to see a large bird, a hawk or a falcon, maybe, soaring above her head to perch on a nearby banister.  “Jane goes!” she yells.  “She goes home safe, and you’ve got me.  That’s the final offer!”

“Dammit, Darcy!”

Whatever else Jane says is lost in the sudden scuffle that arises from the mass of creatures, jeering and jostling and moving close enough to them to make Darcy take a few stumbling steps back.  But she walks right into the coat rack, which then wraps a cold spindly tentacle around her upper arm, tightly enough that her fingers start to tingle uncomfortably.  “Let Jane go!” she yells out again, hoping that one more exhortation will be enough to keep the laughing, cackling, mad creatures at bay long enough.  

The creatures ooze ever closer, leering at her with mouths full of dripping, yellowish teeth.  Darcy takes a deep breath, the coat rack pressing stiffly against her back, and prepares to yell again.  That’s all she’s got going for her right now.

But then there’s another growl, louder than all the rest and setting some of the dust shaking loose from the rafters.  The yowls and jeers from the creatures die down to a low grumble, and they look around at each other like rowdy children suddenly finding themselves in the presence of a teacher.  

The fine hairs on the back of Darcy’s neck stand up, prickling against her skin uncomfortably, and she looks around the room, trying to spot where the new noise came from.  Then, from over the banister that lines the staircase, a creature larger than all the rest leaps off, landing in the patch of ground between Darcy and the seething mass with a small clatter of claws against tile.

She’s not quite sure what to make of this new creature, large enough to easily dwarf her and covered from muzzle to tail in golden brown fur with just a hint of ginger coming out in the firelight.  It’s mostly wolf-like, but much, much larger than any wolf she’s ever seen.  He growls again, low and deep enough to echo throughout the chamber, and Darcy watches with no small amount of awe how the other creatures shrink back from him.  The bird from before, the one who was perched above, watching, swoops down to land on the new creature’s back, surveying the scene with a neatly cocked head.

“We take her deal,” the new creature says, in a voice that sounds like it’s been pulled up from the depths inside of it.  “Her friend goes, she stays.  And while she’s here,” the new creature pauses to snap his powerful jaws at the crowd that’s been slowly inching away, “she’s under my protection.”

“She has a name, you know,” Darcy mumbles, because her instinctive response to fear is snark.  Because nothing about this situation makes any sort of sense at all - animals shouldn’t talk, and coat racks shouldn’t move, and they shouldn’t have been able to go this deep into the forest...but then again, she’s met aliens who looked just as human as she is, and the world hasn’t made all that much sense since.  So she might as well just go with it.

The new creature’s eyes flick over in her direction, shining an odd sort of blue that stands out even in the low light.  But then he gives a small shake of his head, turning his gaze over towards Jane.  “Sam, show her friend the way to the path out of the woods.  Take her as far as you can go.”

“Yes, sir,” the falcon perched still on his back says, beak clicking.  

Jane breaks free from the chair’s grip, and runs over to Darcy, who’s shaking her own coat rack captor off as well.  Jane throws her arms tightly around Darcy and says, “I’ll find a way to get you out of here, I swear.”

“I know,” Darcy replies, eyes damp and stinging just a bit.  “But you can bet I’m gonna give these fuckers the fight of their lives in the meantime,” she whispers.

“Wouldn’t expect anything else.”  Jane presses her forehead to Darcy’s quickly, one final farewell before she’s hustled out the large wooden doors, the falcon taking flight right behind her and following her through.

Darcy turns back to the main room and finds that most of the creatures there have retreated back, hiding out in the shadows or scuttling off into one of the many hallways that extend off of the chamber.  But the new one, the big one, still stands there in the center staring at her, stiff-legged and straight-backed, a glowing, almost overwhelming presence amidst the rest.  “What now?” Darcy asks him--is it a him?--shrugging helplessly.

The creature just tilts his head, entirely inscrutable to her eyes, and turns to slowly plod back up the staircase.  “Follow me,” he says in that low, rumbling voice.

Darcy clutches the strap of her messenger bag where it lay tight across her chest, nods once, and follows him.  They go from the stairs down a long hallway, dimly lit by the occasional flickering sconce.  She can see what look like gilded picture frames on the walls, but the canvases within are ragged, hanging down the wall in tattered strips that have been ripped by any number of claws, she supposes.

(It’s an effort to ignore the blood splatters on the carpeting, but she succeeds.  Mostly.)

One more staircase leads up into a smaller, less grand sort of a hallway, with gabled windows lining one side of it and giving Darcy a glimpse out onto snow-covered grounds and spindly, bare trees that shine silver in the moonlight.  It hadn’t been snowing by the car, Darcy realizes, but there’s no way that amount of snow could have fallen and stopped in the small amount of time that’s passed since then.

(It feels like three lifetimes, however, if she’s being honest with herself.)

“Here,” the creature says, pushing a door open with a nudge from one large paw.  Darcy expects the hinges to creak ominously, but instead the door swings silently and smoothly, revealing a room that’s lit with more of the dim lights.  “This room will be yours during your stay here.  You’ll be able to explore the rest of the house eventually,” he says, large fuzzy head turning her way, “but please give us a few days so we can reinforce to the other...residents here that you are not to be bothered.  Until then, you’ll have an escort.”

“You?” she asks.  The creature is intimidating as all hell, that Darcy’s certain of, but in the moonlight his eyes gleam an almost human blue, pale icy centers bleeding to a darker navy around the edges, and there’s a sense of safety there that she can’t quite place. 

“Sometimes.  Not always,” the creature concedes, sweeping his gaze up and down the hallway.  “Someone will come retrieve you when it’s mealtime,” he finishes up, voice gruff and low, then he turns far more swiftly than Darcy would have expected something of his bulk to move, and disappears back down the stairs.

“Charming,” she mutters, pushing the door to her new home for the time being fully open.  “‘All hope abandon, you who enter here.’”

The room is...well, it’s not quite homey, but it doesn’t feel as decrepit as the rest of the house to some small degree.  The room itself is spacious, but it feels small, the ceiling lower over her head than the lower levels.  Wide, scratched floorboards in a dark wood match the carved paneling on the walls.  

Between two more gabled windows is a bed that blends in, crafted out of the same dark wood as the rest of the place. It’s a canopy bed, with brocaded blue hangings tied back to show a mattress that could probably fit five of her comfortably, covered in a deep navy blanket.  Off to one side of the room is a large wardrobe, fitted with heavy burnished metal fastenings, and on the other is a door, presumably leading to a bathroom. 

She hopes.  A lack of modern plumbing wouldn’t be the final straw, but it’d get her close to it. Although, honestly, where would she go? Can she go?

By one of the windows is a table, round with a singular, heavy pedestal and with two large wing-backed chairs covered in the same fabric as the canopy.  There’s a large fireplace on the wall next to the presumptive bathroom, made from large stones that have been smoothed out with time, a heavy mantle below some ancient heraldry that she can barely make heads or tails of, and a merrily crackling fire in the hearth, adding a luxurious warmth to the room.

It’s not home, not by far, but at least for the time being Darcy doesn’t feel like everything’s immediately going to crumble to pieces around her.

She carefully puts her messenger bag down on the table with a dull thunking noise, and begins to unpack the small amount of supplies she’s got stashed in there: iPod and tablet, her taser (which technically isn’t street legal but whatever, her dad had demanded that she keep it with her at all times to protect herself and she wasn’t going to argue) emergency makeup bag, emergency tampons and painkillers (and good god, what if she’s here long enough for her period to come?  Hella awkward…), cellphone, notebook and pens, a handful of crumpled receipts for coffee and meals she and Jane have shared on the road, a wallet that’s got more change than actual cash in there, portable battery pack, and a granola bar that’s definitely seen better days.

“Yeah,” Darcy sighs, swiping half heartedly at the flap of her bag.  “Between that and the Big Bad Wolf escorting me, this is going to be a great time.”

“Actually, he prefers to be called ‘Cap’,” a twinkly little voice says behind her.

Darcy screams, spinning in place to try and find the voice.  Only, she gets her feet tangled in the thick rug and crashes to the ground, wincing as her palms and knees connect with the floor.  “Ow,” she mumbles.  Once she shakes the stars from her head she looks up to see what’s basically a glowing ball hovering in the center of the room, swirls of red and pink that wrap around the tiny figure within.  When she looks closer, she can see the figure is that of a young woman - closer to a girl, Darcy thinks - clothed in wispy red threads and long, flowing pink hair, with flittering rose colored wings moving rapidly behind her.

The little figure - faery?  Will-o-the-wisp?  Darcy doesn’t know at all - lifts a hand and waves giddily at her, little sparkles floating to the floor as her fingers move.

“Darcy, you definitely aren’t in Kansas anymore,” she mutters.

 

**********

_ Tale outside of time _

 

The will-o-the-wisp ( _ Wanda _ , Darcy reminds herself.  The little flittering creature has a name, and a very human one at that, and she’s determined to use it) comes to Darcy’s chamber the next morning to bring her to breakfast.  She leads Darcy down a different hallway, a smaller, narrower one, but after a few twists and turns and narrow creaking stairs it deposits them right in the kitchen.

The kitchen itself, tacked onto the back of the grand house, with windows that look out on an overgrown, snow covered garden, is positively abuzz.  There are creatures manning stations laden with piles of raw red meat being divided up into piles by sentient kitchen tools, dishing and plating food for the castle’s inhabitants.  “Where does all the food come from?” Darcy asks Wanda, fighting back the nausea at the sight of all the bleeding meat and the indelicacy with why it’s being treated.

Wanda cocks her head to the side, little glittery trails escaping from her body, and she shrugs.  “We’ve learned not to question it,” she replies.  “It appears in the pantry, and it keeps us fed.  But there are other options, if you’d like something a little lighter.”

“Please.”

The eggs are good, farm fresh possibly, though Darcy is a city girl and the only time she’s spent at a farm was a third grade class trip.  Halfway through the meal the falcon from the night before -  _ Sam,  _ she reminds herself - swoops in overhead, circles once, twice around, and alights on the table nearby Wanda.  Darcy looks down at her plate, then back up again, swallowing roughly.  “I’m not eating any of your relatives, am I?” she asks.

If a bird could laugh, the bobbing of Sam’s feathered head is probably the closest he can come to it.  “I can just about guarantee that those eggs aren’t mine,” he says.

“Good.”  Darcy nods, shoveling in another forkful of food to try and cover the sudden awkwardness she’s feeling.  “So are there any house rules here?” she asks.  “Like, don’t eat the poison apple or anything like that?”

Sam cocks his head to the side, glancing over at Wanda, who shrugs her glowing red shoulders.  “You can leave the grounds, but it won’t help,” Wanda says.  “You’ll just end up running in circles and finding yourself at the garden gate again.”

“There’s no place in the house that you technically can’t go,” Sam continues, fluffing up his feathers and pausing to preen one back into place.  “But some of the others can get nastily territorial.  So if anyone tries to start anything with you, come find me or Wanda or Cap and we’ll have your back.”

It’s still strange for Darcy to think of the giant wolf-like beast as having such a mundane name as ‘Cap’.  But the more she thinks of them with names the easier it is to pretend that these are just some new wacky college roommates she’s got instead of fellow-prisoners in this place that’s set apart from time and space.

“Anything else you want to know?” Wanda asks, flittering about and landing by a pot of honey that she delicately dips one finger into.

There are hundreds of questions whirling through Darcy’s brain, but she’s not sure if she’s ready to deal with the answers to them.  So instead she just shakes her head, and tells them that when more questions come to mind, she’ll find them.

 

**********

 

For the next few days, Darcy explores the grand house.  There is a lot more house there than at first glance, she realizes, putting her in mind of of the TARDIS if it wasn’t so earthbound.  So she ends up taking it slow, poking around nooks and crannies and up stairwells and down halls, trying to comprehend everything she sees.

Comprehension is a bit difficult.  It’s not that the house is ever-shifting; on the contrary, it more seems like it’s coming closer and closer to a state of decay, but...there’s magic in the walls, she realizes on the second day.  And grasping that is beyond her normal human capabilities.  She tries, because the part of her brain that likes science and computing and puzzles wants to know everything about how the world works, but, well, ever since Thor came around the old line about there being more things in heaven and earth than she ever dreamt of keeps coming back to mind.

Three days into her search, Darcy discovers the Library (and in her mind, it merits the capital letter). 

The door to the Library is unassuming, a wooden door that matches the other ones in the house, but when she turns the handle and pokes her head inside, suddenly there’s carved panels and marble and shiny lettering and balconies laden down with more books than she could hope to read in her lifetime and yes, this is a good place.  She moves further into the room, trailing her hand along a table, glancing over at a couple of statues in alcoves that are twisted shapes, somewhat familiar but she just can’t put her finger on them.

But the books...oh, the books.  Darcy heads over to the nearest shelf, peering at the titles.  They’re familiar ones, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Dante’s Divine Comedy, a collection by Borges, crammed onto a shelf without any method to the organization.  She’s about to pull the fairy tale collection out to read (maybe it’ll give her some sort of ideas for how to handle this situation, because she’s pretty sure she’s been dropped straight into fairy tale land right now), but there’s a scuffling, scrabbling noise coming from behind one of the tables.  

She should be alarmed by this noise, because she’s convinced the house is determined to spook her, but she’s not.  It only takes a few steps for Darcy to move around the table, and what she finds there is more of a surprise than anything else.  The large creature -  _ Cap _ , she reminds herself again - is there on the floor, a book open between his paws.  Darcy watches as he swipes at one of the pages, scrabbling at it until the edge lifts and he can flip the page fully over with his nose.  “Huh,” she says, before she can bite back the word.

Cap looks up at her, and for a second there she’d swear she can see a blush on those furry cheeks of his.  “I can go somewhere else,” Darcy stutters, waving a hand at the door.  A lot of the creatures like their privacy, and she’s learning that it’s far safer to leave them be than confront them over it.

He shakes his head, looking up at her with liquid eyes that gleam an odd, almost human blue in the light.  “You can stay,” he says.  “You just surprised me.  Not a lot of them out there use the library.”

“Their loss.”  Darcy watches again as Cap turns back to the book in front of him, paw scrabbling at the pages once more.  “Do you want me to read to you?” she blurts out before she can stop it.  Her own cheeks start to burn as his head whips up to look at her, and she wishes that she could take back her words, because there’s being helpful and then there’s being too nosy for her own good.

She holds her breath until he cocks his head to the side, and then, surprising her more than anything else she’s encountered so far in the house, bobs it up and down like he’s nodding.  “Yeah, okay.”

“Good,” Darcy says, smiling genuinely for the first time in a few days.  “I think I saw a fireplace back there, so how about we get warm and then let’s get reading?”

This time, she knows for certain that Cap is smiling at her.

 

**********

 

And so it begins.

 

**********

_ Into the woods _

 

The edges of the grounds are good for running, Darcy’s finding.  Not that she’s a runner or even a jogger, really (she’ll walk, long and far, but unless she’s being chased by a mad Asgardian running isn’t a part of her normal agenda).  But there’s something about this place that makes her want to run, spill the energy out of her bones and into the air, feel that burn in her lungs that reminds her of the humanity that’s so far out of touch in this place.  

So when she goes past the manicured gardens, into the forest that rings the property before the stone wall that’s a more impenetrable barrier than it seems, Darcy shakes out her hair, loosens her limbs, and sets off.  She runs through the snow, feet more sure than she’d imagined they would be, landing steadily and firmly without slipping.  She breathes white smoke that dissipates into the branches above, feeling not quite human for a little while, like she belongs in this new home of hers for once instead of being the ultimate outsider.

Cap crashes through the brush a short distance away from her, never quite meeting up with her as he passes forward and then doubles back, but always keeping her in sight.  The overprotectiveness is kind of amusing, Darcy thinks; she can handle herself and has been doing so for a long time.  Then again, on those days when the other, not as friendly creatures in the house skulk through the woods, leering at her through creaking branches and fallen leaves, she feels more than grateful for the backup.  So she doesn’t complain.

There’s a bit of a stumble, and Darcy finds herself falling through another brambled hedge, coming to rest on a surprisingly well-manicured patch of grass impossibly decorated with glistening dots of snow that have snuck through the branches above, especially for so deep in the forest.  Set within the neat patch of grass is an equally neat little cottage, golden wood-framed, with cheery red shutters and fluffy white clouds of smoke pouring out of the brick chimney.  

The creature that’s just burst through the red-painted front door, however, doesn’t look nearly as friendly, though she wonders how much of that is because the creature itself is designed to look rather grumpy, moss-green face etched in a perma-grimace.  “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” the goblin spits out in an accent that sounds like it’s crawled right out of a pub somewhere in Northern England, crossing his arms over his chest.

The goblin’s a good couple of feet shorter than Darcy is, but he’s intimidating enough that she scrabbles back a few feet on the grass, mouth fishing about trying to find the right words that won’t lead to death by goblin.  But then Cap sails through the hedge, landing with a shake of his fur that sends leaves and sticks everywhere.  He bares his teeth at the goblin, but then snaps his jaw shut, nodding once in the other creature’s direction.  “You responsible for this one?” the goblin says, jerking a mossy thumb in Darcy’s direction.  

“Yes,” Cap says, sitting down and looking more like an oversized Labrador than Darcy’s ever seen him before.  “We took a wrong turn across the grounds.”

The goblin gives Darcy another appraising look, eyes moving over her in a calculating sort of a way.  “She looks a lot saner than some of the derelicts that old hag’s dragged here in her time,” he mutters.

“I’m perfectly sane,” Darcy fires back.  “Most of the time at least.”

Cap cocks his head in the goblin’s direction.  “This is Arnaldo, the caretaker.”

Arnaldo nods at Darcy once, politely, then grumbles under his breath as he turns back to his cottage, “...caretaking my ass, bloody witch stole my house and left me like this.”

“He’s nicer than he looks...and acts,” Cap says with a little huffing sigh.

“Uh-huh.  Sure.  Okay.”

 

**********

 

Time passes.  Days blend into weeks blend into months, and time marches steadily on.  The days do fade into each other a bit, Darcy notices, falling into a routine to help keep what’s left of her sanity from running away from her.  First is breakfast with Wanda, followed by some time in the snow-capped garden to help bring edible foodstuffs inside.  The kitchen’s a safe place for her, warm and welcoming and full of comfortable hearth magic especially when compared to some of the violence lurking in the other halls of the house.

She avoids those halls most days.  Occasionally she’s gotten turned around, ended up down a dark and creaking hall with ripped wall hangings and blood-spattered floors.  And sometimes, before she can find her way out again, Darcy comes face to face with one of those other creatures, teeth bared, a chuckling growl emanating from a furry throat as she stumbles over her own feet to get away.  Sometimes she can get away on her own.  Other times, she turns around to see Cap there, looming larger than life and more than willing to tear out a throat to keep her safe.

Rationally, Darcy knows that she shouldn’t feel safe around a creature that looks like it’s crawled straight out of a horror movie, but when she looks at him, really looks, past the fur and the teeth and the intimidating size, she sees a lot more humanity there than she thinks even he remembers right then.  Which leads to the second - and arguably largest - part of her daily ritual.  For the afternoon, and well into the evening, she meets up with Cap in the library to read.  Sometimes he chooses the books, and other times she does, depending on what they’re in the mood for.  

After some indefinable time, the books give way to personal tales, stories of absentee fathers and surviving wars, of times long past, lost loves and friends, and the shining chaos of the future - at least for Cap.  He listens intently to Darcy’s stories about technology, about how she fixed her first computer with her dad when he first started dropping into her life, about the time the government once stole the little device she called an iPod because aliens, of all things, of the little cameras that can be carried in a pocket and let people half a world away see each other face to face like there’s no distance between them at all. 

Darcy is all but certain she’s sussed out Cap’s true identity beneath the fur now.  It should be entirely impossible, but then again, this whole place is impossible.  She’s grown up with her own stories, after all, handed down from Grandpa Howard to her own father, and while they may have been a little warped with time and her dad’s attitude and issues, the spirit is still there.  Spirit that Captain Rogers still exhibits in spades, despite his insistence that he’s just some beast.  So she doesn’t say anything, just curls up next to him by the fire, reads and tells her own stories, and soaks in those moments when he decides to share some of his own.

 

**********

 

“You can feel, it, can’t you?” Sam says to Cap one night as they patrol the grounds, keeping an eye out for anything coming from outside (which never really happens anymore), and for anything not-so-pleasant from the inside trying to harm another one of the denizens (unfortunately a more common occurrence).  

“Feel what?”

“The magic here.”  Sam flies a lazy loop over Cap’s head where he’s padding through the snow, slow, measured steps that allow him to take in everything.  “It’s breaking down.”

Cap tilts his head, looks up to where the moon is shining through the trees.  For once, it’s a clear night, sharp and cold, but they can see the stars, which is a rarity.  He hopes that Darcy can see this, at least for a little while, before it disappears underneath the next storm.  His eyes trail over to Sam, still soaring in circles above, and he can’t help but think that it’s that much easier to see the man there, lurking beneath the feathers, reaching and stretching and just screaming to be let out.

“I think so,” Cap says.  “Do you feel more human these days too?  Sometimes I wonder.”  Other times he knows he’s far more of an animal.  Those are the easier days.

If a bird could laugh, then the noise that comes out of Sam’s mouth would definitely qualify as it.  “Good influences, my man.  Good influences.”

 

**********

_ Something there _

 

Despite the darkness lurking in all corners of the castle, there’s still the feeling in the air that yes, Yule, Christmas, Hanukkah, and all the other winter holidays are on the way and the proper respect must be given.  At least, that’s what Wanda tells the others.

“Honestly, I really just want to put some decorations up in the library,” Wanda says to Darcy with a small shrug of her glowing pinkish-red shoulders.  She seems to be getting bigger lately, Darcy’s noticed.  Less of a flitting will-o-the-wisp and more of the girl Darcy suspects she was once upon a time, though she’s still perpetually drenched in that pink and red light that swirls around her, ethereal and fey.

They liberate some boughs and creeping vines from the garden, avoiding Arnaldo’s gimlet gaze as they smuggle their wares into the house.  Cap is in the library again when they get there, dozing and cozy by the fire, but he just gives them a baleful look before whuffing quietly and putting his head back down on his paws.  

“Where were you from before?” Darcy finds herself asking as she drapes fragrant pine boughs along a shelf that sports dusty books, shoved in at almost every angle and practically overflowing with words.

Wanda looks down at her from where she’s placing holly twigs and berries in the gaps between the carved molding of the bookcases, little spots of color that twinkle and wink from unexpected places.  “Sokovia,” she says quietly as she focuses on her decorating.  “There was a bomb,” she continues.  “Stark Industries, of course.  I remember being trapped under the rubble with my brother...and then I was here.”  Wanda shakes her head, more of the red and pink glow swirling around her.  

“Oh,” Darcy mumbles, her voice catching around the sudden lump in her throat, the sick feeling in her stomach.  “You don’t have to tell me the rest, if it’s too much,” she manages to get out, even though her statement is a lot more self-serving than she wants Wanda to know.

“Really, there’s not much more to tell.  My parents are gone.  But I miss my brother.  I hope he’s all right without me.”  Darcy just nods in response.

The final touch is the menorah Wanda places on the mantle, a pretty little thing made of delicate filigree that looks like it’s being held together with tinsel and silver vines.  “Baruch Atah Adonai Elohenu,” Wanda murmurs carefully.  Her words stumble and stutter occasionally, like she’s having trouble remembering the prayer, Darcy thinks.  But she mentally cheers her on, and sure enough, Wanda gets to the end of the traditional first night of Hanukkah prayers, nodding with satisfaction when she’s through.  Then, with a flick of her fingers the middle shamash candle bursts to life, and she uses that to light one of the candles on the end.  Wanda nods again, pressing her fingers once, firmly, to the base of the menorah.  

When the rest of the decorations are hung, complete with little sparkling dots of magic around the room to provide a suitable glitter and gleam that’s entirely like and unlike the usual strands of holiday lights all at the same time, Cap sidles his way over to Darcy and presses his large bulk against her side.  “It’s not your fault,” he says lowly, watching as Wanda flits out of the room.

Darcy leans against Cap, resisting the urge to bury her face in his fur and hide away from the world for a little bit.  “It’s my family’s fault, though.  That’s got to stand for something.”

“A family that’s been doing things like this long before you were even born,” Cap points out.  “And I imagine nothing you could say or do would sway them from that.”

She looks over at him and runs a hand over his head, scratching her nails behind his ears, grinning indulgently as his neck twists and the large, furry head tilts to press itself further into her hands.  “Ain’t that the truth.  Remind me to tell you about Iron Man, one of these days.”

 

**********

 

“I’ll tell you a secret,” Arnaldo says to Darcy and Cap when they drop in for a quick visit on one of their forest runs.  “This place has been magical long before that old hag ever sunk her claws into it.”  

“I’m more of a science girl,” Darcy says, flicking a finger at a wind chime that’s hanging from the front porch, and isn’t that just the understatement of the year?  Especially given her family.  Cap’s hunched by her feet, muzzle buried in a water dish that Arnaldo’s set out for him.

Arnaldo shrugs, clutching a broom with his little green hands as he brushes snow off of the porch in an attempt to clear the boards.  “You’ll just have to learn then,” he says.  “I don’t know much about science, but I know my home.  And my home likes magic.  You want to survive around here, you’ll have to adapt to it.”

Darcy jerks a thumb in Cap’s direction, who pulls away from his water bowl and shoots her a look that, if his face wasn’t entirely fuzzy, would be filled with skepticism.  “Aren’t they magical enough?” she asks.  

Arnaldo makes a non-committal noise, a bit of a grunt and a shrug.  “Different type of magic.  They’re cursed, which, in general, isn’t good magic.  The home’s magic?  Well, that just  _ is _ .  Not good or bad, it just exists.”  He gives Darcy another look, then reaches up to pat the small of her back.  If it’s meant to be a comforting gesture, it doesn’t exactly work, Darcy thinks.  

“Great,” she mutters, low enough so that only Cap can hear her.

 

**********

_ The human inside _

 

Some days, it feels like eyes are watching Darcy wherever she goes in the house.  Cold shivers on the back of her neck, a creaking floor as she walks that she’s convinced isn’t from her footsteps alone.  And when she turns around, there’s nothing there but a limply swinging curtain or a tipped-over table, but she shudders anyway, feeling the eyes still on her skin.  It’s infrequent at first, a rare event that only happens when she’s walking through the halls of the great house by herself.

But then it begins to happen more and more, so much so that she gets jumpy even when walking with others.  There’s a small slam that happens when Darcy and Wanda are walking back from the garden, arms laden down with bundles of herbs (well, Darcy’s are.  Wanda waves her hand and the herbs are floating on their merry way ahead of her, held aloft by a cloud of that reddish pink glow).  That little slam makes Darcy go pale, drop her herbs to scatter all over the floor, and look around wildly.

“What is it?”

Darcy’s head whips back and forth, trying to see what’s in the shadows.  “I could have sworn someone was following us.”

Wanda flits upwards, twisting in the air to try and take in the entirety of the hallway.  When she sinks back down to Darcy’s eye level she shakes her head slowly.  “There’s nothing there,” she says quietly.  “I thought I felt something, but it faded quickly.”

“I think I’m going crazy,” Darcy sighs, kneeling down to pick up her fallen herbs.   _ I want to go home _ , she thinks, not for the first time.

It’s easy to spend the rest of the day holed up in the kitchen, sorting through the herbs and preparing some of them to be dried and crushed for safe keeping and storage.  She’s never alone there either, with the kitchen helpers buzzing around to keep everyone fed and the castle up and moving.  They’re most certainly not human, or even anthropomorphically close to that, but they’re a presence there that makes her feel a bit safer.  If she’s not alone, no one can sneak up on her.

Darcy falls asleep in the kitchen, head pillowed on the table with the fire in the large hearth burning down to embers in one corner.  It’s a restless sleep though, full of hazy, half-formed dreams of chaos and screams and other things that make her twitch.  It’s enough that when a large, fuzzy paw nudges her shoulder she jolts upright, nails digging into the wooden surface of the table hard enough to leave a gouge, a shout caught in her throat.

“It’s just us,” Cap says, the bulk of his body pressing up against her back as he all but nuzzles her hair.  Darcy sighs roughly, sagging back against him in relief.

“Sorry,” she mutters.  “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“Let’s get you to bed,” Wanda replies, flittering around to where Darcy can see her.  “I still haven’t seen anything, but I’ll stay with you tonight.”

“There’s nothing there,” Darcy retorts.  “This castle is just making me crazy.”

“I’m not taking a chance,” Cap grumbles, and Darcy can feel the vibrations against her back.  

They’re one floor away from Darcy’s chambers when the attack comes.  A large body launches itself at Cap, flying through the air towards his bulk.  Cap just twists and bends, catching the body with his large head and tossing it into the wall with a loud, ugly thunk.  Then the other creatures begin to slink out of the shadows, claws and teeth bared and ready to take up where their fallen compatriot left off.  

“Sam, Wanda, get Darcy out of here,” Cap growls, fur bristling as he puffs himself up in the face of the advancing creatures.

“I can help!” Darcy cries out, even though Wanda’s already began to tug at her shirtsleeve to get her to safety.

Cap just shakes his head, using the movement to send another attacker soaring down the hall.  “Not taking a chance,” he spits out with a rumble that sends a few of the other creatures skittering back a few steps.  “Sam, get Darcy to safety and then come back and give me a hand.”

Whatever magic Wanda does makes Darcy’s feet move faster, and it almost feels like she’s gliding through the air on a cloud of Wanda’s reddish-pink glow.  They scramble up the last staircase, Sam flying ahead in case there’s anything waiting for them, Darcy using her hands and feet to get the best purchase and move quickly.  Cap’s growl lingers in the back of her head, and while she still wants to help where she can, instinct is agreeing with Cap and saying the best thing for her to do is to hide away until the worst has passed.  

With a worried glance back at Sam and Wanda, Darcy slams the door to her room closed, and slides the multiple locks into place.  It may not stop the truly determined, but she has to at least try.  The noises from the fighting below don’t quite filter up to her room, though there’s the occasional muffled thud and loud yelp that manages to make it through.  She jumps at every noise, pacing around the room as the little lamp on the nightstand casts flickering shadows about the place.  Eventually, Darcy sits herself down crosslegged in the middle of the bed and digs her taser out from where she’s stashed it underneath a pillow and just waits.

For what, however, she isn’t sure.

The sound of the fighting eventually tapers off, the growls and yips and crashes fade away, leaving behind the sound of the wind whistling through the branches.  Darcy hardly dares to breathe, let alone uncurl her fingers from her taser.  She closes her eyes, getting lost in the rising winds until she’s certain she’s outside in the snow being tossed around and pulled apart piece by piece.  Then there’s a small scratching at the door, which drops Darcy right back down to  earth and sharpens her focus.  But then there’s a little whimper that gets Darcy scrambling off the bed, tripping over her own feet in her haste to reach the handle.

She knows that voice.

The door nearly comes off its hinges as she rips it open, and there’s the large bulk of Cap’s body in her doorway.  His fur is speckled with blood, maybe his, maybe one of the other creatures’.  “Get in here,” Darcy gasps, moving out of the way.

“It’s over,” Cap mumbles, muzzle dipping towards the ground.  “Are you all right?”

“Are you?!”  Darcy tugs gently at his fur, urging him into the room and towards the bed.  Cap’s legs skitter a bit, like he’s about to settle down on the throw rug.  “No, on the bed, collapse where it’s comfortable,” she urges him.

“I’ll get blood on there.”

“I don’t care; you need to get off your feet.”  Cap’s bulk far outstrips Darcy’s; he’s easily three times the size of her, but adrenaline is a wonderful thing and she all but drags him to the bed and settles him there.  Then she gets the fireplace burning.  Even a city kid like her knows that one match should not be enough to get all that wood aflame, but it does and it makes the room that much warmer and safer and she can worry about that later.  Next, she gets some dampened towels from the bath, dropping them on the bedstand so she can scramble up onto the high platform mattress.  “Are you hurt anywhere, or is that blood all from other things?”

“It’ll heal,” Cap grumbles, burying his muzzle into the coverlet.  

“They took a chunk of hair out of your leg,” Darcy points out, looking at the ugly gash down his left foreleg.  She sighs, shaking her head as she grabs the damp towel and begins to clean out the wound.  By the time she’s done the cut does look like it’s on the way to healing, really, but she still rips a strip off the bed sheet and wraps it tightly around to keep it protected and safe.  

The easy rise and fall of Cap’s body is a comfort.  He’d drifted off during her impromptu first aid and remains sprawled across the bed like he belongs there, which is a thought Darcy is entirely too exhausted to unpack and analyze right then.  So instead she snuggles down beside him, stealing his warmth as she falls into slumber.

 

**********

 

Sometime in the middle of the night, when thunder has joined the falling snow and each clap shakes the walls of the castle, Darcy opens her eyes.  

Possibly.

She can’t tell if she’s awake or asleep.  The air feels strange on her skin, that electrical tingle that she’s learned signifies magic since she came to this place.  But all her things are still in her room, the only movement the shadows from the still-flickering fire.  She twists in the bed, trying to turn towards the fire’s warmth, and that’s when she sees it.

The wolf-like creature in her bed has been replaced by a man, tall and fair, slumbering somewhat peacefully.  He’s bare as a baby, the only fabric being a loosely tied bandage around the left arm, resting taut across his midsection.  

She recognizes the face, which she can’t pull her eyes away from, despite the rest of the impressive sight in front of her.  Years of high school history courses and that one picture in her dad’s workshop - the one he’d inherited from his own dad, of the Howling Commandos fresh from the field and mugging for the camera along with Grandpa Howard, have seared that face into her mind.  She’d already suspected the truth, had managed to piece it together from the half-told stories and silences in between the words, but it’s nice to have more concrete proof.  

Darcy reaches a hand out and traces a lock of the blond hair that’s fallen over his forehead.  It feels soft under her hands, like woven silk, and she has to gasp with the overwhelming realness of it all.  Then she blinks and the wolf returns in that millisecond, white bandage gleaming against coarse fur.  Right after that another tingle of magic sweeps over her skin, and she falls back asleep almost instantly.

 

**********

 

There’s a small tapping, clicking noise that breaks through Darcy’s sleep, and she wrinkles her nose, burying her face in the sleep-warm fur of Cap’s body instead.  Still, she can hear his low rumble through her cheek, and Sam’s half whistled reply.

“Yeah, they’ve slunk back off to the other wings, but I think they’re only regrouping,” Sam says, followed up with a rustle of his wings.  “So what do we do now?”

“We fight.”

 

**********

_ Old magic and new magic _

 

They hole up in the library over the next few days, burying themselves in spellbooks, battle plans, whatever traces of magic they can wrap around themselves to try and keep the encroaching darkness at bay.  The first day or so, the enchanted items keep bringing food up from the kitchens.  But three meals drops to two, then one, then nothing at all over time.

“Yeah, well, maybe you guys can live on magic,” Darcy mutters, stomach uncomfortably grumbling as she flips through an overly large spellbook bound in a suspect material, written in words she can only half understand, “but us mere mortals need to eat.”

Wanda floats another book off the shelves and down to the floor in front of Darcy.  “You could always become one of us,” she replies.

“I thought the whole point of this,” Darcy waves her hand at the stack of books that keeps building up like a barricade in front of her, “was to get out of here, not be trapped even longer.”

“The point is that when they come after us, we have a few unorthodox tools to fight back with,” Cap interjects from his own perch atop one of the long, sturdy library tables.

“Spoilsport.”

Wanda flitters over to Cap’s shoulder, staring down at the book in between his paws.  “Have you had any luck yet?”

“Wouldn’t mind a shield,” he grumbles.  The words send a funny little shiver down Darcy’s back, sounding more human to her ears than anything that’s come out of his mouth for a long while.  “But aside from armored panels that work with this body shape, no.”

Wanda swears in Sokovian, her usual pink glow fading to a dull, muted red.  “We’re doomed.”

“We are not doomed,” Cap says, looking up at Wanda.  “We can win this.  Just gotta have a little faith.”

Wanda floats around in a lazy circle, giving off an ethereal and odd glow.  “That’s a very human thing to say.”

Cap doesn’t reply, just looks over to where Darcy is silently following their conversation, hanging on to every word.  His eyes then drag around the library, taking in the walls that seem to crumble more and more as the hours slip away, like the house is aging rapidly in front of their eyes.  ‘The good magic is dying,’ Wanda had said earlier that day.  ‘I don’t know what will happen when it goes away.’

That’s why the other creatures are getting stronger, they’d theorized.  Before, a growl from Cap was all that was needed to keep them at heel and in line, at least to the point of leaving them be.  But they’ve been getting bolder, more fearless, and paying an uncomfortable amount of attention to the only human in the vicinity.

Before anyone can say anything else, Sam swoops in through one of the cracked windows high up in the library, leaving the curtain they’d hastily tacked up to block out the cold flapping in his wake.  He’s got a canvas bag clutched in his talons, which he drops carefully on the floor by Darcy.  “Managed to get some food off of Arnaldo, but it won’t last us long,” he says.

“How’s he doing?” Cap asks, climbing off the table to sniff around the parcel.  Darcy begins to pull the food out, some smoked meats and dark, crusty breads, a couple of jars of some pickled spreads, and at least a dozen apples from one of the winter orchards.  The golden pink-tinged flesh gives way to the crisp innards when Darcy sinks her teeth into one of them and moans happily, a trickle of juice running from the corner of her mouth.  Blessed food.

“He’s getting ready to run.”  The statement pulls everyone’s heads up to look at Sam.  If birds could shrug, then that’s exactly the movement he makes, Darcy thinks.  “Arnaldo agrees that the magic that keeps this place going is breaking down,” Sam continues.  “The witch hasn’t been seen in ages, maybe she has to return every so often to keep it going, is his theory.  And if the magic breaks, maybe there’s a gap he can sneak through to get the hell out of here.”

Cap nods, even though she can tell he’s not entirely sold on the story they’ve been told.  “Think he would share his escape route with us?”

“I’ll ask him tomorrow.  Said he’d have some more food for us then, too.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

What little daylight they have soon fades into a heavy night sky, and at that point it’s easier to pack it in and try to get whatever rest they can.  Sam flies up to a perch high in the rafters, claiming it’ll allow him to observe the whole room and see if any of the creatures even attempt to break past their barricade.  Wanda curls up in one of the armchairs by the fire, practically getting lost in the tufted cushions, and drops off to sleep so quickly Darcy can’t help but give her an indulgent smile as she pulls the thick blanket around her own shoulders.

Darcy’s got a little setup as well, with some cushions for a makeshift mattress and the fire nearby to warm her chilled bones.  But the most important thing, she feels, is Cap’s presence at her back, a living shield between her and the main door of the library, and a warm, steady beating heart against her ear as she curls into his side at night.  “Hey, Cap?” she whispers as she turns to rub her face against his pelt, weaving her fingers through the fur.

“Yeah?” he rumbles.

“What do you really think the odds of us making it out of here are?”

She feels him sigh against her, something that’s become more and more familiar to her over the passing weeks and months.  “No idea.  All we can do is try our best.”

Darcy just shakes her head again, snuggling closer.  Even though it’s freezing outside and the room is drafty, she feels warm and comfortable, and the realization that it isn’t because of the fire comes with a lot less surprise than she’d ever imagined.  “Click your heels and say there’s no place like home, huh?”

Cap huffs out a low, rumbling laugh.  “I understood that reference.  And I wish that we had a pair of ruby slippers right about now.”

“You and me both.”  Cap’s wet nose nuzzles up against her hair, and she curls herself even more tightly into him, trying to block out the rest of the world even though it’s a bit of a futile effort.  “I want to go home,” she whispers.  “See my dad one more time so I can yell at him for being a brave, stubborn fool flying around in that tin man suit of his.”

“...huh?”

Darcy giggles.  Her family’s never been an orthodox one and it’s always fun to give people pause, at first at least, by playing up the weirder aspects of it.  

“I love my dad, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his quirks.  One day you’ll get to meet him,” she promises, like putting the statement out into the world will ensure that it happens.  “He’ll either hug you or punch you,” she adds on, thinking of all the grumbles from her dad about Grandpa Howard and his memories of the WWII days...and how much time he spent ignoring his family on the fruitless search for Steve Rogers...who wasn’t even in the ice anymore, apparently, but rather in this strange, magic place with her.

“There may be a way you can talk to him,” Cap says quietly, hesitantly, and she startles against his body.

“Really?”

“Some of the books upstairs...there aren’t just defensive spells in there.  Some deal with communications, too.  I didn’t look any further than that, so I don’t know if they would work or not.”

“But they could be worth trying,” Darcy finishes.  “Yeah, I’ll try it.”

Cap shifts to his haunches, then nods towards his back.  “Hop on.”

Darcy climbs onto his back and from there it only takes a few moments for Cap to vault them up to the balcony and the heavily-laden tables there.  The books are right where they left them, crackling aged pages that seem to bleed magic into the world, something lively and vibrant amidst the decrepitude of the house.  “Thanks,” she mumbles, sliding off with a soft thud.

“Welcome.”  He nods his furry face towards one of the cracked windows and the swirling snow beyond.  “I’m going to patrol in the meantime.”

“Okay.”  Darcy cups his cheek in her palm, darting her fingers back through the fur.  “Captain...Steve,” she blurts out, feeling his jaw clench under her fingertips.  “Stay safe out there.  You hear me?”

_ You have to come back to me. _

“Yes ma’am.”  He nods at her again, then with a swish of a tail he vanishes out the window and into the night.

Darcy rubs her hands up her arms, trying to ward off the chill just a little bit longer, then looks down at the stack of books in front of her.  “Here goes nothing.”

The night drags on, long and almost interminable.  Darcy can see the snow swirl outside the windows, the glow from the sconces and fireplaces bouncing and reflecting the light back.  She can’t take the time to marvel at the eerie beauty of the moment, however.  She’s got work to do.

There are so many spells, she’s discovering.  The books on the table lead to the books on the shelves, sending her down a rabbit hole of magic.  The witch, back in her day, had amassed quite a collection, and while Darcy feels more than a little unnerved by it, there’s no turning back now.

Spells for love, spells for hate, spells to reshape the world, spells to bring gold, the words whirl past her eyes as she flips the pages.  Half of the spells are in languages she doesn’t recognize, feeling unearthly as she tries to mumble them under her breath.  “Maybe Thor would know some of these,” she grumbles.  But even if she had a way to communicate with him, Asgard would probably be a long shot, and there’s no way to know if he’d be able to help her in time.  He might not even remember her, Darcy thinks.  

In any case, that’s not who she wants to talk to tonight.  Tonight she’s got one goal and one alone.  If the world’s going to end, then there’s really only one person out there she wants to speak to before she goes.

The collection of communication spells that she comes across is surprisingly substantial.  Too many of them look above her skill level, however.  Her Latin is terribly rusty, and Darcy suspects if she says the wrong words from one of those spellbooks that have some uncomfortable looking stains on the pages she’ll end up missing a leg or worse.  Eventually, though, she comes across a spell that looks simple but effective: a lock of hair, a silver plated mirror, and some good intentions.

There’s a mirror above the upstairs fireplace, and it doesn’t take long for Darcy to haul it off the wall.  She props the mirror up on the stacks of books so that it’s like looking into a screen.  A sharp knife takes care of the lock of hair, and she lines the bottom edge of the mirror’s silver frame with the strands.  With a deep breath, Darcy begins to recite the words, over and over again until the mirror glass fuzzes over.

Then the mirror glass becomes sharply clear, like looking through a window, and she sees that it’s peering right into her Dad’s workshop...one of his many computer screens, if she’s guessing the angle right.  Darcy can’t resist it; she knocks on the glass of the mirror.  Surprisingly, it works, bringing Tony’s eyes over to her.

Tony looks like he wants to jump right out of his skin there, but he holds it together admirably.  “Okay, so why am I seeing you suddenly pop up on one of JARVIS’s screens?” Her dad looks the same as usual, maybe a little more worn around the eyes, and the mouth. Seeing him has tears welling up in Darcy’s eyes and the back of her throat. She has to swallow a couple of times before her voice comes out somewhat normal.

“Magic.”

Tony’s eyes are also suspiciously wet-looking, and he’s using the elaborately casual voice he only does when he’s really worried.  “Yeah, try again, maybe I’ll believe you next time.”

Darcy laughs. It feels good. “Says the guy who flies around in a glorified tin can.  You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Seriously.  It’s good to see you, kiddo.  Doctor Foster told me what you’d done for her.  Then we tried looking for you, but…” Tony sags back against the nearest surface, for once looking almost as old as he actually is.

“That’s magic for you.  How you doing, Dad?”

He shrugs insouciantly. “Oh, you know, the usual.  Pissing off Congress and changing the world.”

Darcy grins.  “As long as it’s for the better?”

“Always.”  A long pause, heavy with all the things they haven’t said.  “So you any closer to coming home?”

She doesn’t want to lie, doesn’t want to burst that fragile bubble of hope that she can see so clearly on her dad’s face, but what other option does she have?  Does she really want to let him know that this is her ‘one last time before dying’ moment, because that is a legitimate possibility by the end of this night?  Of course not. 

“I think so.  We’re working on a couple of options that actually look promising.”  She shakes her head, smiling indulgently at Tony’s reflection in the mirror.  “I’ve got so many stories to tell you.  You’re not going to believe who I met.”

Off in the distance there’s a crack and a shatter, the sound of branches and brush breaking all too loud in the silence of the snowy night.  Then there’s a howl, loud and piercing and  _ angry _ , and it makes the hairs on the back of Darcy’s neck stand up.  “What the hell was that?” Tony asks; even his goatee looks frowny, she thinks with an internal sick giggle.  

“I don’t know, but it’s not good,” Darcy blurts out.  “I have to go find out, though.  I’ll call you in a couple of days?”

She can’t tell if Tony knows that the words coming out of her mouth are possibly a lie, but his face is solemn and steady, and Darcy finds herself drawing what little strength she can from it.  “Sounds good, kiddo.  We’ll talk more then.”

“Definitely.”  Darcy presses her fingers against the glass of the mirror, giving her dad a smile that looks a lot stronger than it feels.  “Love you, Daddy.  I’ll see you soon.”

When she pulls her hand off of the mirror the slick surface ripples and grows dark, her Dad’s face replaced by a dulled reflection of the bookshelves behind her.  She sighs heavily and then straightens up, imagining her spine being replaced by the steel she’s going to need to investigate exactly what’s going on and see if she can be able to help.

Another howl echoes throughout the library, sounding even angrier than earlier, and Darcy’s head whips around, trying to nail down where exactly it’s coming from.  She may not be as strong as the others, as Cap and Sam and Wanda, but she’s got a good brain in her head, and an utter unwillingness to back down from a fight.

With those weapons at hand Darcy sets off into the night, ready to help where she can.

 

**********

 

Cap’s patrol is silent, his massive paws padding on the fresh snow that’s blanketing the castle’s grounds.  The winter roses that crawl up the walls of the house are twisted and spindly, gnarled vines with sharp thorns that catch and hold the snow.  He twists his bulk to look up the house itself, and notes that the outside is looking even worse than the inside.  There are gaping, toothed holes in the walls, the jagged edges black and ugly against the snowy sky.  Broken glass from the windows decorates the ground, a dangerous sparkle on the crust of snowflakes.  

The left wing, the one that his fellow...creatures (and he can barely bring himself to call them that these days, not with the deliberate animosity and violence they've been expressing) has been all but reduced to rubble, tumbled piles of stone replacing what was once halls and archways.  The sight sends a ripple through Cap's fur, and he can't stop worrying about which creatures may have escaped into the woods, biding their time until they can go after Darcy.    
  
The part of Cap that remembers how to be human is almost grateful for the mission, to have someone to protect rather than just scratching out a brutal existence.  Not that she can’t protect herself, he knows, but given the destruction he’s seeing here he suspects that the others have nothing left to lose anymore.  And when there’s nothing left to lose, why should they hold back?

_ Yeah, sure, that’s the only reason why you want to protect her _ , his inner voice fires back, sounding suspiciously like Bucky in the silence of his mind.  

Maybe if it was a different world, he tells himself.  If he’d met Darcy at a dance hall as she was being bold and brazen, encouraging him away from the wall and onto the floor to dance with her, he would have considered it.  He would have done more than consider it, he would have grabbed tight and not let go.  But she deserves someone fully human, unlike this new form of his,twisted and transformed into something near incomprehensible.  

_ So dramatic,  _ the inner voice sighs, sounding like Peggy this time.  

_ The last thing you are is a coward _ , the voices say in a wavering chorus, overlapping and bleeding into each other.   _ You’re happier than you’ve been in a long time,  _ says the Peggy voice.

_ Even with the furry face _ , the Bucky voice chimes in.  

There’s a sharp cracking noise, a breaking branch trod on by an oversized paw, and the sound pulls Cap up short.  He stops in his tracks, eyes scanning the grounds around him.  Below the noise of the wind he can make out mumbles and mutters, shapes like words formed by mouths that haven’t spoken them properly for ages.  He bares his teeth, a low, rumbling growl bleeding from his mouth that grows in intensity as time goes on.  There’s not enough light from the fires inside to see what exactly is lurking out there, but he can hear raspy breathing and the crunch of heavy paws and sharp claws on icy snow.  The other creatures are far closer than he’d like them to be.  

Their odd-colored eyes begin to shine through the trees, moving inexorably towards him from all directions.  Cap knows he could run, leap back through the windows, scoop Darcy up, hide away to buy them some more time to plan.

_ Yeah, running away is something you’ve never known how to do,  _ Steve thinks, jaw shifting as he scans the creatures beginning to breach the woodline.  He snaps his teeth at them, then sends out the loudest howl he can muster, a wordless cry that says  _ no more. _

_ Time to fight. _

 

**********

_ Home _

 

Darcy’s first stop is to rouse Wanda from sleep, directing her to find Sam because Cap’s going to need all the help he can get.  Then she drags Wanda’s abandoned chair over to the window, trying to see what’s going on through the blowing snow.  The creatures are milling around...no, not milling, circling, drawing ever closer to the center, where Cap is.  He’s all too easy to spot, larger than life, angry and snarling at anyone who dares get too close to him.

He’s terribly outnumbered, however.  While Cap is substantially stronger than all the rest, even he can be overwhelmed.  Darcy purses her lips, thinking fast, hopefully faster than the creatures outside.  Her arm creeps to the side, reaching for a large, brassy multi-armed candlestick that’s been taking up residence on the closest bookshelf.  The metal is cool under her fingertips as she wraps her hand around it.  With a deep breath she lets the candlestick fly, launching it out the window and cracking one of the creatures right in the head.

The creature, sleek and scaled, hits the ground silently, raw red blood spilling out onto the snow from the fresh gash.  Darcy can feel her own wordless growl rising up in her throat as the group down below, Cap included, turn their stares as one right up towards her.  “No more,” she mumbles lowly, the words escaping on the wind before anyone else can hear her.  It’s time to fight.

Hell, she tased a god once.  These creatures are downright  _ small _ compared to Thor.

Another creature, one with bat-like wings like dull leather in the small lights that come from the library, takes to the air with a powerful flap.  It heads straight for her, and Darcy braces herself against the windowsill, readying herself.  She ducks as massive claws reach out for her, talons sharp and ready to tear open her soft midsection, but one of the claws catches against her shoulder.  She cries out as it digs into her flesh, tugging her off balance.  For a moment it seems like she’ll be able to right herself, but she can’t quite grasp properly with her injured arm.

Like the world has suddenly decided to spin in slow motion, Darcy feels her body begin to tip over the ledge, the window frame tearing at her sweater as she falls forward.  The cold wind rushes past her, braces her back as she tumbles through the air, stealing the breath from her lungs.  Distantly, she can hear Cap howl, full of anguish, and she squeezes her eyes shut, waiting for the impact.  

She’s not ready to die.  She’s still got far, far too much living to do, and Cap...Steve?  He needs her help too.

Her body crashes into the winter rose brambles at the base of the castle.  The branches break with crackles like gunshots and the stubborn thorns cut through her clothing and rip at her skin.  But she breathes, rough gasps that fill her lungs, and while Darcy can feel the blood oozing from her in hundreds of tiny little cuts, she isn’t broken.  She can still fight.  She can hear Cap fighting the creatures off in the clearing, their attention on him now that she’s supposedly downed.

This place...these people.  Wanda.  Sam.  Steve.  They are her home.  And she will fight for that.

And then, suddenly, she knows exactly what she must do.

The vines and thorns grip at her body as Darcy pushes herself into a sitting position, shredding clothing and skin alike and yet she doesn’t at all care.  She rolls out of the bushes, wrapping the thorny ropes around her hands, spiky and rough, blood dripping from them onto the falling snow, staining it the same color as the cherry ice her father used to take her for when she was a child.

“There’s a phrase,” she hollers out, loud and echoing, stern enough to bring the fighting creatures to a halt and draw all eyes to her.  She licks red-stained lips, tasting the coppery slickness of the blood in her mouth, gliding her tongue over her incisors. 

“Wolves and girls,” Darcy continues, pacing slowly towards the melee, drawing the fistful of thorns over her arm until her skin itches, bursting at the seams with that something new inside of her beginning to come forth, “both have sharp teeth,” she finishes on a growl of her own, and leaps.

By the time she reaches the center of the fighting her body has completely morphed into that something new, all dark fur and claws and sharp teeth that are the perfect compliment to Cap’s shape.  Darcy still feels slightly ungainly in this new body, with everything in unfamiliar places, but there’s an instinct within her that takes over as she moves.  She bobs out of the way of one lunging creature, only to lean over to the next one and rip his throat out with one snap of her strong jaws, his blood spilling hot over her pelt.  

Cap growls again, leaping over her to tackle yet another creature into the snow with a flash of claws, swiftly dispatching it.  He then turns back to her to bury his muzzle against the scruff of her neck, inhaling deeply and she knows he’s trying to bring her scent into his lungs, to try and ascertain that it’s really her in front of him.  Even though he did see her transform right there, sometimes tactile belief makes everything better.  

Darcy just nods - or what passes for a nod in this body - and wriggles up against him, letting body language do all the talking because she still hasn’t quite got the hang of the vocal chords in this form.  The moment passes all too quickly, however, and then it’s back to the fighting, attacking the next oncoming creature as one.

By the time Sam and Wanda swoop into the fight a couple of minutes later in a cascade of feathers and sparking red energy bolts, Cap and Darcy have already taken care of a good number of the attackers, even though more of them keep coming out of the woods without warning.  She can feel the eyes of the other two drifting back to her in between attacks, wondering just what had happened to her, but there’s no time for it.  

Another creature, big and metallic and ugly, lunges after Cap, but Darcy goes after its legs, bones crunching beneath her strong jaw, and tosses it to the side like it matters nothing to her.  And it doesn’t at all - her primary focus is keeping what’s hers safe.  Keep them safe, and let them go home.  The creature screeches, a sharp tone that grates against Darcy’s newly sensitive ears, and twists so that one of the armored plates on its back slashes at her side.  She goes flying, a spray of blood flying after, and crashes into Cap’s body, sending them both into the snow.

She can feel Cap’s growl against her side, loud enough to rattle the branches on the trees.  Yet, all she can see is the way her blood decorates the lighter patches of his fur while she collects her wits about her.  “This...ends...now!” she hears him say, just before he lets out a howl that sounds unlike anything she’s ever heard in her entire life.  It’s like it’s coming from the depths of the earth, from deep inside Steve’s soul somewhere, and it freezes every single thing around them in place.  

Darcy hauls herself to her feet, wobbling unsteadily as she digs her paws into the snow, and joins in the howl.  Her voice joins in chorus with Steve’s, weaving around the clearing and sending a shiver through all present.  The sound of Sam’s wings echo around the howl, and the swirling magic from Wanda’s fingers laces in and out of the trees, encircling them until everything is aglow in the red light.

The light grows and grows, suffusing everything and blinding Darcy, until it snaps back and fades away.  Darcy’s not surprised at all to see that the creatures have been reduced to nothingness. The only thing remaining the footprints and claw marks that are being covered up by the still falling snow.  What surprises all of them, however, is the sudden sound of the large house behind them shivering and shaking, followed by a cascade of bricks from all the walls.

“The witch’s magic is dead,” Wanda says, zooming up higher to get a better look at everything.  “I can feel it.  We need to go  _ now _ .”

Steve nods, eyes roving over the crumbling castle.  “Sam, you and Wanda and Darcy get out of here.  I’m going to make sure there’s no one else left inside, and then I’ll join you.”  Before anyone can protest, Steve runs back towards the building, leaping over one of the broken window frames and back inside.

“Dammit, Cap!” Sam groans.

Darcy just growls again, thinking  _ like hell you’re leaving me here, _ before she runs after him, full tilt, into the breaking house.  

All around her is decay, ornate furniture broken and crumbled like it’s been abandoned a hundred years past, carpeting reduced to loose strands that get stuck in her claws as she gallops over them, picture frames hanging off the walls, the art shredded and lost as the canvases flap in the howling winds.  Cracks are growing in the plaster and brick, and the snow sneaks in and whirls its way around Darcy as she looks for Steve.  

She doesn’t see any other living soul in the castle as she searches.  The kitchen is empty, whatever few living creatures that were left disappeared long ago, with only a scant few still and silent utensils decorating the countertops.  The far halls are bereft of life also, with none of the yells and howls that have been haunting there present...the only thing that remains are the bloodstains on the floor.   _ It really is dying _ , Darcy thinks.  More so than ever before, the house feels dead.  Dead and still and almost ready to return to dust.

In the front hall she comes across Steve, standing in the center of it as he turns his head round and round to try and see everything.  “I thought I told you to get out of here,” Steve says with a grumble, making Darcy just roll her eyes in response.  Steve’s head dips, the slightest quirk at the corner of his lips, and she knows she’s won.  "This floor’s clear,” he continues.  “Let’s go check upstairs.”  Darcy gives him a nod, vocal chords still frozen beyond the noises appropriate for her new shape.  She leads the way up one of the swooping staircases, feeling confident that this powerful body of hers can take on anything that’ll cross her path.

Only...well, things shift, after a bit.  What starts out as an exploratory mission becomes something almost playful between the two of them, darting in and out of rooms, nipping at each others’ heels, circling around and urging each other on.  It’s almost like foreplay, the human part of Darcy’s brain recognizes, as she tosses her head back against Steve’s and runs further down the hallway.  

She is...surprisingly okay with the thought of foreplay and what it would inevitably lead to.  Their world is ending, and yet this shiny new (okay, maybe not so new - the spiritual and mental attraction has always been there) thing is taking up all of her attention and she’s delighting in it.

She feels his teeth tugging at the back of her neck again, and Darcy lets out a low rumble, the one that she’s discovering is the equivalent of a giggle.  So she squirms about, twisting so that her whole body is pressed against Steve’s for a brief moment as she changes direction.  Darcy lets herself run again, great leaping strides that take her down the hallway and up the next flight of stairs that lead to the room that she’d claimed as hers.  

Darcy pauses and glances back over her shoulder, seeing Steve standing there by the stairs.  His eyes are intent on her, deep and bright blue and looking at her like she’s the only thing in the world.  A shiver races down her back, and she gives her shoulders a shimmy, hair cascading in dark waves around her.  She tilts her head, beckoning towards the bedroom, and walks that way, knowing that Steve will follow her, because he wants this just as much as she does.  

By the time she hits the bed, landing on the coverlet in a scramble of hands and knees, she can see her skin looking pale and stretched and human once more, followed by the warm weight Steve’s body directly behind her.  She arches, pressing her back to his bare chest, and his fingers lace through hers, gripping tightly.  “Yes, please,” she murmurs as his mouth finds her neck and trails kisses up to her hairline.  

This is a different type of magic, Darcy thinks as Steve slides inside of her with one smooth move.  It’s a magic that, no matter what, bad witches can’t kill.  That push and pull of bodies moving together, his hips slapping wetly against hers as he thrusts, the hand that strokes up and down her arm in concert with his mouth against her skin.  It’s something feral and beautiful and inherently divine, and altogether entirely unlike anything that’s ever been seen in this house before.

And yet…

“Wait,” Darcy gasps out, bringing Steve to a stop, deep inside of her. 

“What is it?” he breathes, sounding far more wrecked and gorgeous than she’s ever heard him before.

“I wanna see you,” she says.  Darcy squirms forward, feeling his cock slip out of her, and then she flips herself over smoothly until she can see his face, hovering above her.  “I want to see you,” she repeats, hands lifting up to cradle Steve’s face.  She strokes her fingertips over the sharp cheekbones and the dark, bristly beard that decorates his jaw, down the bridge of his nose then trailing back into the shaggy dark blond hair on his head.  She runs a thumb over his red lips, then pulls his mouth to hers, a first real and true kiss that says more than mere words ever could.

She spreads her legs, inviting him back inside of her.  When he slides home again she rises to meet him, legs locking around his hips to keep bringing him closer and closer.  Darcy wraps her arms around his shoulders, pressing their chests together, and she scores her nails down the pale skin of his back.  The moan that Steve gives off against her mouth at that is altogether human, and it sends a happy thrill through Darcy’s blood.

And while their eyes stay locked together as they keep moving and thrusting, it’s impossible for Darcy to ignore the lights that keep flashing in the corner of her vision.  Something is happening to the house, she can feel it, and she wonders if she should stop to look, even though, really, the sex is far too sublime to even seriously think about stopping.  “Hey,” Steve says, in a low voice.  “Focus on me.  Whatever’s out there?  It can’t get us here.”

“Yeah.”  Darcy nods sharply, rapidly, mouthing at his jaw.  His thrusts hit her internal walls just right, making her shudder and sigh against his skin.  And as the light grows around them, Darcy ignores it, allowing herself to fall headfirst over the edge instead.

 

**********

 

It’s a slow, gradual wake up, Steve finds.  The first thing he feels is his body in the bed, skin-warmed sheets against bare skin.  And it’s his own, human skin again now, no more creature-shaped limbs or fur, even though he can feel that the hair on his head and on his face is far more overgrown than he prefers.  He stretches out all of his limbs beneath the sheets, right down to fingers and toes, enjoying the movement of muscles that finally feel like they’re back where they should be.

His eyes blink open, squinting in the faded yellow sunlight that’s streaming in through a window somewhere.  The next thing he notices is that the room has changed drastically from the night before.  Steve knows the ornate suite that Darcy had inhabited all too well, all heavy woods and brocaded fabrics that exhibited the same gloom and doom as the rest of the castle.  This room looks nothing like it now, smaller and more compact, but so much lighter and brighter than he’s ever seen in that place.  The bed’s just as large as it was before, now it’s just a simple wood frame, with thick, comfortable blankets in a forest green color.  A few scattered pieces of bedroom furniture match the golden wood of the bed, and there’s something incredibly homey about this new room.

Then again, home isn’t always defined by a place, Steve has learned.  

Finally, Steve rolls his head on the pillow to take in the young woman curled up in the blankets next to him.  Darcy is still deeply asleep, face half buried in the pillows, hands loosely resting by her mouth.  Her breathing is deep and even, so calm after the excitement of the night before, and he can’t bring himself to wake her up to show her what’s happened while they were distracted (or just plain asleep).

Steve hauls himself out of bed, feeling shaky and wobbly on legs that haven’t been built like this for decades now.  His center of gravity is different, a return to how it used to be, and he lurches over to one of the sunny windows like a newborn deer trying to walk for the first time.  With careful fingers he peels back the filmy curtains, and his breath catches in his lungs. 

What had once been a dark and brambled garden, overgrown plants and spindle-branched trees that loomed close is now a patch of grass surrounded by a waist-high stone wall.  The grass is mostly neat, a touch long, and it waves gently in a passing breeze.  Off to one side he can make out a bricked path, leading down to a slatted wooden gate in the stone wall, and past that is a packed dirt road with tire treads - an obvious sign of civilization in Steve’s eyes.  They’re still surrounded by the forest, but it feels far less ominous in the sunlight, like it’s a part of the earth instead of something designed to keep the world out.

The magic is still there, Steve senses, in the part of his brain that still remembers what it was like to walk on all fours, but it’s different now.  Natural.  It shimmers instead of screams, dancing around the edges of the house in sheer relief.  

_ Ding, dong, the witch is dead, _ he thinks with an inappropriate, giddy rush.

Arms twine around his waist, small hands tracing up the bare planes of his abdomen.  “Good morning,” Darcy murmurs against his shoulder blades, face buried against his skin like she’s making herself at home there.  Steve twists around in her arms so he can hug her back properly, all that bare skin stretched out against each other, and feeling more comfortable than he’s ever been.

“Morning,” he replies, voice slightly scratchy.

“It’s good to see you like this,” Darcy says with a grin that’s as bright as the sun outside as her hand cups his face.

Instead of using those rough words to respond in kind to her, Steve bends down to kiss her again, pouring every single feeling into that one gesture.

So this is what home feels like.

 

**********

 

_ Epilogue _

 

There are good days and bad days to their recovery.  On the good days they lounge around in the study, paging through all of the books that somehow managed to escape the witch’s spell and take up residence in the cottage, spilling over shelves and rising in little towers where they’re stacked on the floor.  Darcy, using the internet connection that she managed to jerry-rig together, fills Steve in on everything that he missed in the world during his nearly seventy years under the spell.  Sometimes they’ll hike down to the farmers’ market in the nearby village, a quaint little hamlet in northern England that still seems to have one foot in the past and the other one in the 21st century present, and stroll around like any other young couple, sampling homemade treats and bringing home fresh, crisp fruits and vegetables for dinner.

It’s quiet and calm and sweet, and helps keep Steve grounded in reality.  He likes watching Darcy work on the herb patch in the garden, savory treats to flavor food, sweet flowers to help provide a deeper sleep, and a few bright leaves that shimmer with that same ancient magic in the dirt.

(There are still those books of magic making themselves at home in the study, having decided to come to this world with the rest of the books instead of fading away into the nothingness of the broken spell.  Steve and Darcy don’t ignore them, but read and learn from them just as they do from the rest of the books.)

The sleeping draughts help on those bad nights, the ones where Steve wakes sharply with a scream caught in his throat, or where Darcy thrashes around in the sheets until they’re practically strangling her no matter how hard she tries to fight her way out of them.  And on those nights, maybe it would be better to let themselves go catatonic, to blank everything out and just not think about it.  But they’ve sat down to talk about it, and made a deal with each other.  That on those bad nights, they’ll rouse each other out of the nightmares and go curl up on the couch in the study, limbs intertwined with those mugs of sleepytime tea, and read until the sun comes up or until one of them falls asleep on top of the other.

On more than a few memorable occasions, Darcy takes the initiative to strip Steve out of his pajamas on that couch and ride him until they’re happily limp and sated, with the only thing filling their senses the taste of sweat-slick skin, the sounds of Darcy’s gasping moans, and the feel of her hips under his hands and the way she surrounds him entirely.  It helps to turn a bad night into a much better one.

The cottage (the bones of which had been transformed into the castle slightly outside of time by the witch) becomes their sanctuary, allowing them to interact or hide away from the world as they please.  And it really is theirs, because Darcy’s very wealthy father (Howard’s  _ son _ , of all people, which is something Steve is still trying to wrap his brain around) through some technological magic, managed to dredge up the deed from somewhere and flat out buy the cottage and the forest surrounding it.

“It’s the least I can do for my kid,” Tony had said during a video call, shooting wary glances at Steve the entire time.  Which Steve really can’t blame him for - he’s having his own trouble believing what’s happened to him, so he can’t even imagine what a scientist and a futurist like Tony Stark would think about it.  “Especially when there’s a supposedly dead nonagenarian national icon involved,” Tony continues with a grumble, which makes Darcy wince and rub at her forehead.

“Not now, Dad,” she sighs.  

He is grateful to Tony, however, and hopes he can express it enough.  After all, Tony is the one who flew Jane across the pond on his private jet so that she and Darcy could have a tearful, but ultimately joyful reunion.  And he’d also sent with her a few files on the lives and locations of Sam Wilson and Wanda Maximoff, who were still apparently alive and well, even though he couldn’t tell by reading the files alone if they remembered their experiences in the castle.

(Steve and Darcy are determined to find their friends, to greet them warmly, see how they’re doing, and thank them heartily for saving their lives.  They need to do a little more research, but they’ll get there.)

But right now, at this very moment, Steve is lying on his back in the sun-warmed grass of the garden, eyes closed and face tipped up to catch some of the last few rays of light before sunset, arms crossed behind his head, and feeling utterly and totally content.

A shadow dances across his eyelids, blocking some of the sun, and he opens his eyes to find Darcy’s face hovering above him, smiling down at him as her hair falls in a curtain all around them.  “Having fun?” she asks with a pretty smirk. 

“Just enjoying the sun,” he replies.  

Darcy nods, running her hands back through his hair in a way that’s fast becoming a habit of hers.  His hair is still longer than he likes it, hanging shaggy and choppy around his face, yet he can't quite bring himself to go back to his usual style.   _ Not the Forties anymore,  _ he reminds himself.  Maybe it’s time for a new look to go along with everything else.  “Sun’s almost down,” Darcy says nonchalantly, looking over at the tree line behind the cottage.  “You feel like going for a run?  Burn off some of that energy?”

Steve looks over at the trees, dark and inviting in their own sort of a way.  Then he looks back up at Darcy, seeing the banked fire that’s gleaming in her eyes.  A slow grin spreads across his face, and he runs the tip of his tongue over his teeth.  The small movement is enough for Darcy, who presses a swift, firm kiss to his mouth then scrambles to her feet.  With a twist of her body she’s running towards the woods, shedding clothing and her human skin until it’s the wolf that clears the stones and heads into the trees. 

_ New is good,  _ Steve thinks as he strips off his own skin for the night and runs to join his mate. 

 

**********

 

**Author's Note:**

> The End
> 
> Holy shit I made it…seriously, the created date on this document is May 2, 2016, so this has been a project in the works for well over a year now. And while I can’t quite believe just yet that it’s finished, I’m truly glad that it is.  
> The story of Beauty and the Beast, in all its incarnations, has been one of my favorite stories for a long, long time, and I’ve been wanting to transform it into my own story for just about as long. Given my love of ShieldShock, it was only appropriate that I put my two darlings into this story. Because there are so many variants of this story out there, I ended up picking and choosing what elements I wanted in there. The atmosphere of the story is definitely more inspired by Angela Carter’s stories as well, so if you’re looking for modern, feminist, and dark variants of fairy tales I cannot recommend her enough. 
> 
> I also may have been inspired, just a wee bit (all right, a LOT) by the original Cap!Wolf stories from the classic Captain America comics back in the day. I just couldn’t resist it. And I had to give Darcy Natasha’s line from the comics. Given the situation, I feel like Natasha would approve. 
> 
> For those of you who are wondering, Arnaldo is fine. Because he was from a different and earlier time period than the rest, when the magic broke down he was sent back to his original time to live out the rest of his life in peace. The good guys were all returned home safely, because author’s prerogative. As for why Steve ended up in Darcy’s time period rather than his own? Eyh, magic. ;)
> 
> Thank you very, very much for reading and going on this journey with me. While this story may have driven me absolutely batty in the writing process, it was entirely worth it. If you’re interested in any of my other stories and getting more of a glimpse into my fandom life, come visit me at [my tumblr](aenariasbookshelf.tumblr.com).
> 
> Post-credits scene for those of you who read through all my babble:
> 
> It’s the late night phone call from Tony that has Darcy pulling out her tablet to see the latest news report, and sure enough it leads to her and Steve sitting up in bed in absolute shock as they watch the video that’s being broadcasted by various news channels featuring the wreckage of the Valkyrie being hauled up from its icy grave, almost seventy years after it went down.
> 
> “So,” Tony says, sounding unnervingly clear through the small speaker on the phone, “who’s going to be the one who tells SHIELD why they’re definitely not going to find a frozen Capsicle in that plane there?”


End file.
